1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer for printing on paper using an ink ribbon.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a printer for printing photos captured by a digital camera or the like, a thermal printer is known which sublimates ink ribbon by a thermal head and performs thermal transfer printing on a recording paper. When forming a color image by a thermal printer, a three-color ink ribbon of yellow, magenta, and cyan is used, and one image is formed by three thermal transfer processes.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-159432, a method is known in which three thermal transfers of yellow, magenta, and cyan are performed by one thermal head to reduce size and cost of the printer. In this case, an ink ribbon is used in which a set of dye portions of yellow, magenta, and cyan is repeatedly arranged to form dye surfaces, the number of which corresponds to the number of print pages.
FIG. 2 illustrates an ink ribbon used by the thermal transfer printer discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-159432.
As illustrated in FIG. 2, the ink ribbon includes sublimation dyes of yellow (Y) 101, magenta (M) 102, and cyan (C) 103 and markers 104 and 105 arranged between each color for detecting the top position of each color. Positioning of the top position for each color is performed by detecting the marker by an ink ribbon marker detection sensor such as a photo reflector while conveying the ink ribbon before printing each color.
The top marker 104 of the first color is differentiated from the other markers 105 by the number of the marker lines to be able to perform positioning of the top position for the first color no matter where the ink ribbon is located. When performing positioning of the top position for the first color using such an ink ribbon, the ink ribbon may be wasted by skipping.